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Posts Tagged ‘USA Politics’

Born in Harlem and working within New York City’s downtown art scene, Norman Wilfred Lewis (1909-1979) first began painting in a figural style grounded in social realism, focusing on bread lines, police brutality, and the struggles of black Americans. Lewis transitioned to a more abstract style of art during the 1940s and 1950s, continuing to focus on social inequalities but growing increasingly interested in personal expression rather than representation. Lewis’s shift to abstraction was driven in part by his realization that reproducing or mirroring social conditions did not adequately reflect his goals as an artist. At the same time the subjects of race and civil rights reclaimed Lewis’s work in a profound way in the 1960s. Works like Untitled 1961 address political activism and humanitarian concerns through hazy visuals inspired by clandestine Ku Klux Klan gatherings and political marches and Labor Day parades.

The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art organized Procession, a major retrospective of Lewis’s works in 2016, which traveled to the Amon Carter Museum and the Chicago Cultural Center. Curator and author Ruth Fine received a 2017 award of distinction from the College Art Association for the Norman Lewis exhibition catalogue.

Alfred Bendiner’s “And So I Give You Our Candidate and the Next President of the United States of America” 1948 captures the energy of convention week then and now in Philadelphia. Bendiner was trained as an architect but is better known as a celebrated cartoonist for the Philadelphia Bulletin known for his wry humor and social commentary. One can only imagine what he’d make of our 2016 presidential race.

This work was made in 1948 when both the Democratic Party Convention and the G.O.P. Convention were both held in Philadelphia. We believe the wreathed candidate is Thomas Dewey, who famously lost to Harry Truman and became one of our most admired presidents.

We have an excellent selection of works by Bendiner (1899-1964). Please ask for more images or, even better, come visit to see them face to face.